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Jerm and Evan shouted "Just ski it!" as I built up the courage to take the plunge over the lip. Just a bit below and to the right, they stood a top a twenty foot overhanging cornice, but the two assured me that no monstrous cornice lurked below me. I didn't know if I should believe them. "Just ski it!" they cried again. One tentative turn brought me to the edge of the precipice and I could see that it merely plunged over in excess of 45 degrees for short bit before mellowing. A more confident turn followed as I arced down the steepest part, weighted down by a 40+ pound backpack. The slope below me buckled and folded. AVALANCHE! * * * The three of us lay huddled low in our megamid at 7,500 feet perched atop the Trorery Glacier. FLASH! One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi... BOOM! BOOM! Graupel pounded our shelter as the lightning struck around us. We waited tensely, cold, exhausted, and at the mercy of Zeus himself. * * * First Jerm, then Evan, then Ari, finally me. A rope strung between us, we tentatively traversed the Easton Glacier, the sky and slope merging together in a cloud of vast whiteness. We knew that gaping crevasses lurked around us, but we couldn't see anything. If it came to it, hopefully, it would be Jerm that would fall. The rest of us would drop to the ground, plunging our self-arrest grips into the snow. We would stop his fall quickly, set anchors and Jerm would either prussik up on his own--again, hopefully--or, if he were debilitated, Ari would set a Z-pulley so that he and I could haul him out. * * * The first two of these to scenes occurred on Monday, 21 May, our first of three days on British Columbia's famed Spearhead Traverse. The third came five days later on the slopes of Washington's Mt. Baker. The scenery on the Spearhead is mindblowing. "The Haute Route of the Americas" it is often called. It starts from the top of Blackcomb and wraps around the Fitzsimmons Creek drainage and ends up in Whistler. For over twenty kilometers the route ascends one glacier and descends another, usually not dropping below 7,000 feet. Our variation of the classic route took us 3,000 feet down the steep Curtain Glacier on the second day, the upper half of which treated us to powder turns between icefalls. It also meant that we were faced with a draining climb of 2,000 feet at 6 PM. Ugh! Fortunately, the climb ended at the cozy Himmelsbach Hut. After leaving the Blackcomb boundary, we did not see a single other soul or ski track until we returned to the base of Whistler two days later. We had gone into the traverse thinking it would be a warm-up, gentle tour. It wasn't. It was grueling and we were in isolated wilderness. There was no easy escape route. At times the vastness, the isolation, the beauty, and the seriousness of it was almost overwhelming. It was another world. It was heaven. Gluttons for punishment, we met up with Jerm's friend Ari and spent Thursday, the 24th, skiing high alpine bowls and lacing our way through cliffbands amidst the dramatic scenery off of Rainey Pass in the North Cascades. A couple of wet slides added some spice to an already hot dish. Evan nailed a non-stop line through trees and cliffs, despite the funky snow. After a tour of the tihshole known as Concrete, WA, after we nearly hit an elk, after Jerm drove his truck off the road, after searching futiley for a soak in a natural hot spring, after downed trees aborted a planned ski of the famed Mt. Shucksan, we ended up spending Friday and Saturday on Mt. Baker, the northern most of the Cascade volcanoes. Saturday was summit day and we made it to about 9,600 feet--about 1,100 feet short of the summit--before the whiteout conditions forced us to turn around. Sure, we had a 6,000 foot descent to look forward to, but 4,500 feet of it was in the disorienting whiteout down a glacier and carried us between gaping crevasses and towering seracs. Yeah, snowmobiles may legally summit the volcano, but this wasn't child's play. It wasn't the most glamorous way to end the ski season, but it was an adventure until the end. Every day we suffered physically and had at least a few thrilling mini-adventures, whether it was slab avalanches, lightning storms, skiing crevassed slopes, or routefinding through cliffbands. Evan and I are indebted to Jerm's research and his hospitality and to his and Ari's knowledge of safe glacier travel and ropework. Evan, and perhaps Jerm, will surely followup with other thoughts and defintely photos. --Matt K. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - SkiVt-L is brought to you by the University of Vermont. To unsubscribe, visit http://list.uvm.edu/archives/skivt-l.html